Live Review: Lucy Rose at Hampstead Heath Baptist Church

I’m going to be honest. Before this, I hadn’t been in a church in years. Not properly, anyway; I’d been to one for a volunteering event and I’d stood outside one for a uni trip and shivered in the freezing cold, but I hadn’t spent any copious amount of time in one and I was more than okay with that. That’s changed though, because the end of Lucy Rose’s most recent tour saw her take to a very small, slightly makeshift stage in Hampstead’s Heath Street Baptist Church.

I’ll be honest, again – I hadn’t actually heard very much of her music. I’d heard what my housemate played in the kitchen when we were cooking, and I think I’d heard ‘Shiver’ on the radio. I’d been assured that I would definitely have heard a few songs on Made in Chelsea, although I didn’t actually recognise any. But that was okay. It was amazing anyway.

It’s hard to describe the vibe without sounding like I’m exaggerating – it’s also difficult to say ‘vibe’ without sounding like a bit of an idiot – but it was probably the most relaxed gig I’ve ever been to. Take the stage, for example – it was decorated and lit entirely with bedroom lamps which Lucy assured the crowd were actually from her bedroom. One of them was from a skip, she admitted, but the rest were hers and it gave the whole scene a homely, comforting vibe that was difficult to beat.

It wasn’t your run of the mill ‘let-me-play-all-of-the-songs-from-my-album’ gig either. Instead, she took requests from the crowd – all of whom seemed to have been to at least one gig before and all of whom seemed to speak to her like she was a friend, or someone they knew well. To Lucy’s credit, she was resolutely down to earth and this paid off.

My highlight of the night was definitely ‘Gamble’ – a song that it took some convincing to play. It was emotional. It was goose-bump inducing. It made me buy her album and not just stream it on Spotify, and there’s not really any higher praise than that.